Another Bonding Moment
by kassinova
Summary: Sleepless nights were far from a foreign concept for Keith Kogane. Unfortunately for him, they were hardly an unfamiliar idea for Lance McClain, either. Maybe, despite their differences, Keith will come to realize that Lance isn't too bad, after all... (author's note: just so there are no shipping surprises-this IS a klance fanfic, so just keep that in mind. - )


_"How could we ever want to keep you on our team?! You're a_ _ **Galra!**_ _You're the exact thing that we're trying to protect the universe from!"_

"No… No, I'm not like them… Allura, please…."

 _"We trusted you, Keith. We were a team."_

 _"I knew there was some reason why I didn't like you."_

 _"You were the best out of all of us. You let us down."_

"Pidge, Lance, Hunk, _please,_ you can't believe that, _no!"_

 _"You're dangerous, Keith. We can't keep you on the team. You have to leave."_

"No. No, Shiro, please, no, no…."

 _"Menace."_

 _"Horror."_

 _"Traitor."_

 _"_ _ **Evil.**_ "

I bolted upright in my bunk, my chest heaving as I gasped for air.

No.

No, no, no.

My hands felt around my form. Same sheets. Same bunk bed. Same me.

Same, human me.

I breathed a sigh in relief as my heart settled in my chest once more. I fell back on my mattress and rubbed my eyes with the palm of my hands.

Same me. Human. For now.

I had to get out of here. I couldn't be shut in here like this. Not right now.

I eased myself upright again, swung my legs off the side of the bed, and crammed my bare feet into my slippers as I pushed myself off the mattress. I found a discarded tee-shirt on the floor near the foot of the bed, slipped it over my head, and left my quarters, silently easing the door shut behind me.

The corridor was silent, wrapped in the peacefulness of the dead of night. It felt lonely, almost eerie, to walk down the castle halls in the darkness. Even the normally-bustling living area seemed dismal and unsettling without the usual hum of the lights and hubbub of the other paladins. Despite that, I found the silence oddly comforting. Silence seemed to be a treasure nowadays.

My feet carried me past all that—past the throne-room, past the dining hall, past the training deck and control room—and directly to what I had come to think of as the 'patio', a small, empty room (save a few cushioned, white chairs and a couch) that must have once served as an observation deck, where the glass walls beveled outwards to display the dozens of galaxies, hundreds of planets, and millions upon millions of bright, twinkling stars that formed countless constellations and solar systems. I momentarily got lost in the swirl of the universes and nebulas above me.

Then, a voice shattered the silence.

"Well, well. Looks like I have some company, after all. And here I thought I was the only person in the castle awake."

I flinched at the voice. I knew _exactly_ to whom it belonged.

It was Lance. He gave a jaunty, smug wave from his position in the corner of the couch. And, from the looks of it, he was fresh out of bed himself. He hadn't even bothered with putting on his shirt—he was bare, save his sleep shorts.

I hid my cringe and shuddered. At least he was _wearing_ shorts. I had heard a couple of horror stories of Shiro and Hunk having to go wake him up after he missed his morning alarm—and being completely horrified by the fact that he _always_ slept commando.

Thankfully, I never had that task. I had the feeling it wouldn't end well on his part.

"Yeah, well, you thought wrong," I replied sharply. I joined him nonetheless. He was in my spot, after all. I settled into the opposite corner of the couch—far, _far_ away from him—and crossed my arms over my chest. "I thought I was the only other Paladin who really knew about this place. It's kind of in an odd spot."

"Yeah," he replied in a mocking tone, "well, you thought wrong."

"Screw you, McClain. And couldn't you have just put a shirt on or something?"

"Why?" he flirted, raising a dark-brown eyebrow. "Am I distracting you?"

I caught the remnants of a faint smirk flash across his face—a blinding glimmer of white teeth in the darkness—and scowled as I shot him the bird. He laughed in reply. I did not.

There were a few moments of quiet as we stared at the view through the glass in front of us.

"So, can't sleep, huh?"

"I _was_ sleeping just fine. I just…." I let my voice trail off. No _way_ was I telling him about that nightmare.

"You had a nightmare, didn't you?"

Son of a quiznak _._

"What's it to you?"

"Jeez, man," he shot back defensively. "I was just curious. Don't get your panties in a wad. Besides… I did, too. I didn't want to go back to sleep just yet. Nightmares make me anxious."

I felt a little bad after that. I guess I _was_ being a little too apprehensive.

He motioned to the glass and the galaxies beyond it. "Well, I guess you could say that I… needed some _space._ "

All of the regret that I had begun to feel in the cold little pit I call my heart suddenly vaporized like a cloud into thin air. "Jesus _Christ,_ Lance. I can't stand you."

He snorted, amused with himself. "Ditto, man."

There were a few more fleeting moments as we both gazed out at the universe before us.

"It's really beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I breathed in reply, mesmerized by the constant kaleidoscopes of blues, purples, greens, and reds—and also faintly annoyed at his inability to keep his stupid mouth shut. "It really is."

"When I was little, back in Cuba, I would have nightmares more often than not," he began. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His face was somber, dreamlike in his state of recollection. The stars seemed to reflect—no, to dance—in his ocean-blue eyes, making his irises seem like their own little separate universes far from the one before us. For a moment, the annoyance grating my nerves faded. I ripped my own eyes away from him and focused back on the view from the window. "My big brother and I shared a bunk-bed in our little 'room'—to be honest, it was really just half of a really big room separated from our oldest two brothers by a curtain—and I had the top bunk. We had a window that looked over the ocean. We lived outside of town, away from any lights, and so you could always see millions and millions of stars from our window on a clear night. It was like our window had the best view, really." A smirk appeared across his lips. "I would wake up, and go sit in the windowsill… It had a seat there, you see… and my brother would always get up and sit right beside me, and it's like he _knew_ … and we would count the stars and point out the constellations until I would fall asleep again, and he'd just carry me to the bottom bunk and put me there and climb into my bunk to sleep. He never complained about it, though. He never offered to switch bunks, or anything like that. We were really close." A chuckle. "Sometimes he'd even crawl in the bunk beside me if I was scared. And he did this thing where he'd pet my hair like I was some kind of dog—Jesus, I hated it—but it always made me go right to sleep. He'd do it again if he noticed I was having another nightmare."

The vulnerable, sensitive expression in his eyes seemed to melt into something like sorrow for a split second, but it vanished in a blink of an eye. I searched for something to say, and found nothing.

I discovered that I had been staring at him again. I made no attempt to look away this time.

"I just… I miss them, you know? I still wonder, if… If sometimes, Mickey looks out the window and gazes up at the stars, and tries to think of which one I might be near. I wonder if he tries to point out the same ones we used to make up stories about all those years ago. I wonder if they still think of me. I mean… it's been almost two years now. Maybe they've just… Maybe they've given up hope. Maybe I'm just that sibling that disappeared into thin air, and that's that." His gaze dropped to his bare feet. I felt a pang in my chest as I saw the pained look in his eyes. He really _did_ miss Earth.

I would never be able to know how he felt about his family, but I really felt for him.

"Lance, I… I don't think they'd give up searching for you," I began awkwardly. I wasn't exactly sure what I was about to say to him, but it proceeded to come out of my mouth in a jerky, sporadic manner nonetheless. "I mean… You're still their brother. They're your family. I… I may not… _have…_ a family, but… For some reason, I'm pretty sure that they love you enough to never, never give up on finding you. I mean… you _are_ family. It's a family thing. I think. I'm _sure_."

He looked up at me, his eyes shining with tears as they met my own. "Thanks, Keith. That means a lot to me."

I felt my heart give this weird lurch in my throat.

 _Whoah_ , I remember thinking. _Whoah, he's_ crying.

And then, unexpectedly:

 _Whoah. He has really nice eyes._

More silence. More eye-gazing. I finally tore my gaze away from his own. I felt like I had a fever. What in the actual _heck_ was going on? What was wrong with me?

"So, uh," he began again, "what about you? I mean… you know that I have a family larger than the state of Texas, so… So, what about yours?"

"I don't have a family," I replied flatly.

"Well, at one point you did," he prodded. "I know your mom was a Galra, right? What about your dad? Where are you from?"

I huffed. "Why are you so curious about my past, all of a sudden?"

"I shared part of my sob-story. You share yours. Besides, it's not like we're going to sleep anytime soon, anyway." He checked his watch. "It's five-forty-five in the morning. I try to get up at, like, seven. And I'm pretty sure you get up earlier than I do—six-thirty, probably. Not really any use in trekking all the way back to our dorms for forty-five more minutes of sleep." He raised an eyebrow at my slightly besmirched expression, a faint smirk tugging the corner of his lips upward in a way that made me want to punch the ever-living crap out of him.

Another weird thought blurted through my brain.

 _Either punch the ever-living crap out of him, or kiss him._

I shoved that notion into my mental dumpster of annoying, mildly infuriating thoughts.

No. No way. This wasn't happening.

 _Absolutely not._

"Fine," I snapped. "You know I'm from Texas. I lived in this little podunk town an hour outside of Houston. My dad wasn't around much, so I raised myself on my own. He taught me the basic stuff, how to fend for myself, how to change a tire, et cetera. And then he died. And then I signed up for the space program. Because, why not? I was sixteen and I didn't have a reason to stay on Earth. I didn't have a family holding me back. Might as well make the best of it. It isn't like I had anyone to miss me."

He was watching me intently as I said this. I stared at my hands, my eyebrows furrowed together. "Surely you had _someone_ that looked after you after your dad died," he said tentatively, studying me. "You couldn't have looked after yourself on your own, could you?"

"The two people who owned the mechanic shop that my dad and I worked at checked in on me once or twice a day, but other than that, no. I was on my own. Some of the feds tried to put me in a foster home, an orphanage or something. I told them to back off, and they gave me a choice. Either join an orphanage, get put in a foster home, or find some boarding school to go to. So instead, I told them to go screw themselves, and enlisted with the Garrison. And that's pretty much it."

"You were a year older than me, but you were in the higher ranks of the same class as me," Lance added, nodding. "Yeah. I remember now."

"Yeah, I still don't remember being in the same class as you. You were probably so annoying that I tried to block you out of my head."

He scowled. I smothered my chuckle before it could leave my throat.

"You know the rest. 'Disciplinary issues.' Hiding out in that little shack, studying the Blue Lion's energy signals. And, now I'm here."

"Did you have any friends back on Earth before you left?"

"Two or three. Enough to play football with on the playground if I was up to it. There weren't really too many kids who wanted to be around me. I was a weird kid. Not that I cared too much, though. I'd rather be by myself."

"Did your dad ever tell you anything about your mom?"

"He… he mentioned once that he was in love with a woman while he was in space—he was an astronaut, you see—and that he came back to Earth with me. It didn't add up, and the details were always either too fuzzy to make out, or too vague to understand. But I didn't ask questions. It still doesn't add up, really—no matter how hard I try to understand it."

"How did… How did he die? If you don't mind me asking…."

"Freak accident. Got pinned against the wall by a vehicle. The doctors said he was bleeding internally, and… a few days later, there were complications, and he died. Everyone who had come around to check up on me kind of faded in the background after that. The only people who came around after that were the shopkeeper and his wife. I guess everyone just thought I'd be in an orphanage soon enough. I didn't have any close family. I was one of those… what are they called…? 'Lost cases.' Something like that."

"Wow… Quiznak, Keith, I… I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked—"

"No, no. It's nothing, really. That was seriously four years ago. No big deal."

There were a few more minutes of silence.

"… If I were one of those kids, I would've wanted to be friends with you."

I raised an eyebrow, a crude laugh erupting from my chest. "Oh? Would you, really?"

He gave me an offended expression. "Well, yeah. I had a knack for making weird friends. How do you think I hit it off with Pidge and Hunk so well?"

We both ended up laughing at that remark.

Maybe Lance wasn't so bad after all.

"It's almost six o'clock. Shiro's probably up by now." He tilted his nose in the air and sniffed. "And I'm pretty sure I smell coffee. What do you say?"

I smirked involuntarily. "Are you asking me out for coffee?"

He blinked, his eyes wide. "Whoah. Hold the phone. Did you just… _flirt_ with me?"

I felt a violent heat rise to my face in response to his flattered, eagerly-quizzical expression, and ignored his little remark. "Are we… Are we having another bonding moment?"

He snickered, the expression still occupying his features. I wanted to pummel that look off of his stupid, smug face. "What, like the one where you cradled me in your arms?"

I started. "I thought you said that that didn't happen."

"Still don't remember it. So, it still didn't."

Again, I flicked him the bird.

Again, he laughed.

(And, this time, I did, too.)


End file.
